Alongside the announcement of down-level support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, there is more exciting news in regards to Windows Defender ATP. Since today Windows Defender ATP Security Analytics is extended with two new security controls; BitLocker and Firewall.

Remark: Some information relates to pre-released product (Windows 10 Insiders Preview build) which may be substantially modified before it’s commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.

In my previous blog I highlighted some of the new (preview) features – Security Analytics Dashboard – of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP). In this blog I’ll go into more details how you can improve your organizations endpoint security posture by translating the actionable recommendations into Microsoft Intune device restrictions profiles (aka policies).

With the recent release of Satya Nadella’s – Microsoft CEO – book and guide “Hit Refresh” to the future, it was a perfect occasion to deploy eBooks with Microsoft Intune. Earlier this year Microsoft introduced support for volume purchase (VPP) support for eBooks via Microsoft Intune.

Last week Microsoft announced the public preview of Windows Defender ATP Windows 10 Fall Creator update. I’m quite excited – we’ll should – of the new capabilities which allows you to better protect your endpoints from threats.

I had the opportunity to work with this for a while and like to highlight my personal favorite feature – Security Analytics Dashboard. Why? It’s because this feature gives me insights of my current endpoint (Windows 10, Windows Server, Linux* & Mac OS*) security posture and what it takes to utilize the full potential.

Note: the content in this blog post may subject to change as it’s based on Windows 10 Insider Preview build 16232/16237.

In the early days of Windows 8.x modern management made it’s appearance but due it’s limitations at that time not widely adopted.

The introduction of Windows 10 as the cloud OS with tight integration of Azure AD changed this rapidly. Combined with configuration service provider (CSP) modern management provides increased capabilities and therefore closing the gap with traditional management.

Another often-heard challenge of modern management is the troubleshooting part. This can sometimes be challenging as it is experienced as a black box. Common tools (e.g. Event Viewer, PowerShell, WMI) are sometimes cryptic and thus challenging to interpret, until today!

To illustrate the ease of troubleshooting (low entry), we configured a custom policy by Microsoft Intune which configures Windows Defender Application Guard (currently in preview) and check the process of the policy being applied on our endpoint .

Once assigned the policy in Microsoft Intune we triggered a policy refresh cycle.

Updated interface

In the updated GUI we can now determine which policy categories are configured, including our Windows Defender Application Guard (AppHVSI) policy. Besides the outline of the policy categories we can also determine the installed applications.

Management Diagnostic log files

The updated GUI goes beyond just displaying what is configured/applied and provides the ability drill down to our MDM configuration. The MDM configuration can be exported in a management log file which is exported in HTML format to C:\Users\Public\Documents\MDMDiagnostics\MDMDiagReport.html

The MDM diagnostic log file provides general information of your system. However the most interesting part is yet to come.

First of all it provides insights of the configuration sources and resource (CSPs) and whether it’s a device- or user based policy. The Resource section correlates to the various policies and installed apps. I highlighted a guid which correlates to an installed application.

Further it provides a detailed list of which policy categories are deployed by your MDM solution. These categories are listed in the updated interface I mentioned before. Further this section provides the detailed configuration of your policies.

In our scenario we deployed Windows Defender Application Guard policy. It shows you the policy area, default value, current value and whether it’s a device- or user based policy. It confirms the custom Windows Defender Application Guard Policy has been landed and successfully applied.